Exterminating the elusive gremlin

[pentium]

This has been a weird issue that I ghave brought up here before in another form and started at some point while I was first setting up my computer and installing software and drivers this time last year. I don't remember when exactly during the above job it started so don't ask what I last installed. The following is what I gathered over several months of observation.
8/10 times when you boot the system up (warm or cold) and you log in the first thing you will notice is that the audio is terribly garbled. After the system has finished logging you in and has loaded everything you will notice you are idling between 15 and 35%. If you try to play an audio file, it will still be garbled. If you play a video, the video will be laggy and the audio will be garbled.
Games, flash, the screensaver and pretty much anything else multimedia is just sluggish and unusable.
If I open the task manager I'm able to see where 50% at most of the processor usage (not including the idler process) is coming from. For the rest I need to run Microsoft Process Explorer and I'll see the rest of the processor usage being tied up in interrupts of all things.
From here on two things will happen. Either the system will lock solid eventually and need to be rebooted or after a random amount of time the idle will drop back to normal (between 0 and 5%) and everything will run smoothly again until you restart the system. I noticed that once the system returned to normal the processor usage taken by interrupts drops from up to 30% down to 3% at max.
From my knowledge on what interrupts are, something is firing off interrupts unnecessarily (if it was fine before things started to get installed it could be a bad driver or piece of software but a hardware fault is not likely) and it is choking the system.
Can I get some assistance tracking down the source of the fault and killing it once and for all? I can already rule out a reinstall as the problem persists after a clean reinstall.

[AudioCraZ]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

First thing I would do is check for spyware... those are always resource hogs, and they will come with anything.

Try using Spybot or SUPERAnti spyware. If you are getting the slowdown after a fresh windows install, and only drivers, you may have other issues. Check for heat on the CPU or Chipset. Those would be my starting points.

[pentium]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

Here we go again...
Okay...

1: NO Viruses
2: NO Adware/Spyware
3: Do not ask if it is 1 or 2 because I know it's not (and believe me, it's not).
4: Average CPU temp: (Socket 478 P4 Extreme) 62c
5: Average GPU temp (Sapphire Radeon HD3850 AGP) 50c
6: Average northbridge Temp: 50c

[yyonline]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

Hmm...random suggestion off the top of my head... check if DMA mode is turned on for your hard drive? XP is supposed to turn it on by default, but I've seen a few instances when it either doesn't, or it gets turned off for some reason I've never quite figured out. It results in generally horrible performance and high CPU usage during and after a lot of disk activity. It seems to take awhile to recover from this, even after the disk activity stops, which could correspond with the "return to normal" you're seeing.

It's easy enough to check - Device manager > IDE controllers > Primary/Secondary IDE channel properties > Advanced settings tab > Transfer mode.

[pentium]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

Nope. Currently running in DMA mode.
I have noticed that the BIOS says that both my hard drives are running in 16-bit mode though but I don't know if that's something that can be toggled from the BIOS.

[AudioCraZ]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

Then I would try Passmark burn In test while in windows. See if anything fails, also watch the 3d tests, and see if the circles have any jumpiness to them.

Once I found that a friends AMD cpu was going south, one of the points on the balls would jump out, and show a funky spike jumping out, then going away randomly. I verified this by putting his vid card in another system, with no errors, then moving his cpu to another system, and got the same jumpiness.

[kikkoman]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

can you post the system specs?

[Sudum Gumudu]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

This has been a weird issue that I ghave brought up here before in another form and started at some point while I was first setting up my computer and installing software and drivers this time last year. I don't remember when exactly during the above job it started so don't ask what I last installed. The following is what I gathered over several months of observation.
8/10 times when you boot the system up (warm or cold) and you log in the first thing you will notice is that the audio is terribly garbled. After the system has finished logging you in and has loaded everything you will notice you are idling between 15 and 35%. If you try to play an audio file, it will still be garbled. If you play a video, the video will be laggy and the audio will be garbled.
Games, flash, the screensaver and pretty much anything else multimedia is just sluggish and unusable.
If I open the task manager I'm able to see where 50% at most of the processor usage (not including the idler process) is coming from. For the rest I need to run Microsoft Process Explorer and I'll see the rest of the processor usage being tied up in interrupts of all things.
From here on two things will happen. Either the system will lock solid eventually and need to be rebooted or after a random amount of time the idle will drop back to normal (between 0 and 5%) and everything will run smoothly again until you restart the system. I noticed that once the system returned to normal the processor usage taken by interrupts drops from up to 30% down to 3% at max.
From my knowledge on what interrupts are, something is firing off interrupts unnecessarily (if it was fine before things started to get installed it could be a bad driver or piece of software but a hardware fault is not likely) and it is choking the system.
Can I get some assistance tracking down the source of the fault and killing it once and for all? I can already rule out a reinstall as the problem persists after a clean reinstall.

Creative Labs audiocards do not like at all to share its IRQ with other devices. Other audiocards possibly too. Check the boot-up screen if the audiocard "multimedia device" get its own.
Had a similar problem once, but my comp would bluescreen instead. Moved the audiocard, an Audigy to another PCI slot, and never had a problem since.

SG

[sofTest]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

Sounds like it might be a driver issue. Have you tried a Live-CD to verify if it's a Windows issue or a hardware issue?

[kikkoman]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

Creative Labs audiocards do not like at all to share its IRQ with other devices. Other audiocards possibly too. Check the boot-up screen if the audiocard "multimedia device" get its own.
Had a similar problem once, but my comp would bluescreen instead. Moved the audiocard, an Audigy to another PCI slot, and never had a problem since.

SG

exactly why i asked. i think pentium already posted his problem some time ago, and i vaguely remember something about a Creative card.
Creative cards (esp. SB) don't like systems with more than 2GB RAM either.

[Wizard]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

This, is my major reasons I stayed away from creative from what I had heard over the years.

1. Many of their drivers is *broken* and many were secure that it only will register with a rightful owner with correct key.

2. Hog resource

3. Poor handling of IRQ process.

There are GOOD audio cards out there that stomps on the creative.

Cheers, Wizard

[ratdude747]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

This, is my major reasons I stayed away from creative from what I had heard over the years.

1. Many of their drivers is *broken* and many were secure that it only will register with a rightful owner with correct key.

2. Hog resource

3. Poor handling of IRQ process.

There are GOOD audio cards out there that stomps on the creative.

Cheers, Wizard

may i add that their cards are bug ridden in the hardware dept. as well. I know my audigy2 card was a bust... it had static very bad... and it wasn't linux doing it; it did it in windows too. the fix they published kinda helped but it also was a resource hog.

hence why all of my creative cards are in my spare pile.

[pentium]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

I booted the system with A ubuntu live cd and at least got good audio (but could go no further as iy hated my video card and no, I'm not swapping out the cards right now to try again.)

Creative Labs audiocards do not like at all to share its IRQ with other devices. Other audiocards possibly too. Check the boot-up screen if the audiocard "multimedia device" get its own.
Had a similar problem once, but my comp would bluescreen instead. Moved the audiocard, an Audigy to another PCI slot, and never had a problem since.

My system is totally loaded. There are a lot of things the BIOS sees as "multimedia device". Normally though the sound card takes IRQ 5 and 7 and address 220h. Mine however seems to be using IRQ 17 though which it seems the onboard realtek chip uses as well. :/

exactly why i asked. i think pentium already posted his problem some time ago, and i vaguely remember something about a Creative card.

I remember you discussing that. I moved the card to three different slots with no change in the symptoms.

Creative cards (esp. SB) don't like systems with more than 2GB RAM either.

...that on the other hand I never heard and could be an issue as I got three gigs installed.

Bandwagoning

Jumping on the bandwagon with Wizard

That kind of talk I will not tolerate in this thread. If you got a beef with Creative hardware you have owned, rant elsewhere and not in here please.

[Wizard]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

I had my experiences with the creative audio cards. Not again. Last one I had was "sound blaster 512 Live!" it crashed the PC instantly. No conflicts.

Is the onboard audio turned off in bios if it is not able to then there's a issue. The other solution to try is try different audio card there are premium non-creative audio cards out there.

And please quote parts of text in context, Not the "bandwagoning", also I'm not supporting what other said. I drew on my experiences as well and lot of researches. Even the forums who is looking for good audio cards is *still* throwing brickbats at creative even in windows 7.

There are audio card brands:
M-audio
Asus (good comments)
AUZENTECH (?? but seems ok)
HT Omega (seems to be getting good comments and saying good regards of it).

Cheers, Wizard

[kikkoman]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

...that on the other hand I never heard and could be an issue as I got three gigs installed.

to be exact, it's a hardware bug Creative never put much effort in getting around with their drivers.
here's the explanation:
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/bug-re...-more-ram.html

for the gazillionth time i recommend the kX drivers to anyone with a soundblaster/audigy and running windows.
it turns these nowadays cheap cards (got my current SB Live for a fiver or so a few YEARS ago) into extremely great cards.
ASIO!
full routing and DSP control, you can do lots of stuff (effects etc) in hardware via plugins, daisychain several cards etc.!

the hardware itself is not bad at all. in fact, it's very capable, Creative just didn't use much of its capabilities. E-mu have used the same chips (10k1) on some of their cards.

there are decent cards on the market, but most of them are WAY overkill and overpriced for what they can do. i'd rather spend some more and get a pro card but my old SB (+LiveDrive) does almost the same things.

so, if you want to bash Creative cards, do it with that X-Fi bling crap. Crystalizer, what?!?
(which is what Auzentech use in their newer cards).

[AudioCraZ]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

I have been using Creative Labs cards for years. I remember the older ISA cards were picky (couldn't use dual proc systems), and the original PCI CL cards having funky driver issues, but With the Audigy, and newer, I have never had any issues with any systems I put them in. I have ran my older Audigy, Audigy 2, and X-Fi card in my system with 4 gigs of ram, and have had no issues. Not even with the systems I have built. Then again, I am very picky about what other hardware I use. I know there is going to be some hardware conflicts with all hardware eventually, blaming Creative Labs cards all being bad, for a card that was built over 5 years ago is a bit premature.

If you think it is the sound card, remove it, load the system and see if you do or dont have any issues. If system is acting up after you remove or disable the audio subsystem, then it isn't the problem.

If you have a PCI video card, try that and see if it is cpu overuse from the video card drivers. ATI-AMD is known for that. I am curently running a ATI card to try out some of the newer drivers, but I am a long standing NVidia card user due to reliability.

Another thing is you are using a s478 CPU. Some drivers have issues (due to bad programming) with the HT (Hyper Threading) of the 478 CPU's. They think it is 2 logical cpus, like a dual core, not just a bus jump. HT only is included on P4 cpu's, with 800 fsb, and a few rare 533 fsb procs. Celerons from 478 never had them. Most decent boards allow you to disable this in the bios.

Also, just for giggles, verify you haven't forgotten a lone standoff on the MB backplate. Don't take insult to this, when I am loaded with multiple systems, I have known to do this during heavy frustration, or overloaded. Everybody is human, and humans do make mistakes once in a while.

Are you using matched memory in your system, or are they sticks of memory from different brands? I have seen some memory not liking each other, wierd, but it happens.

One last thing I can think of. I have had issues with different brand of HDD's if you are using IDE drives. Seen drives from Seagate not liking being paired up with WD drives. Every now and then, some drives just won't work with other brands drive...

[pentium]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

I'm still confused as to why you are all still pointing the blame at my sound card. Remember that even content that has no sound in it at all (like my screensaver) are also terrible performers while the system is in this sluggish phase.

[seanc]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

Even if it makes no sense, would it hurt to whip the creative out for a week?

[pentium]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

Well I could for a week considering to you people it's you guys, Creative is the devil (by the way, I told you guys to shut the hell up and you ignored me) however as opposed to most people it seems I'm of a select few that actually has their system tucked away under their desk with the side on. If I want to do anything with ym system, it's going to take a lot of work.

[ratdude747]

Re: Exterminating the elusive gremlin

um... 5 min max (plus installing drivers if needed)... and thats WITH the side panel from hell on (aka the dell dimension 4100 case)